Tough times — As we announced in October, we've been aggressively managing our costs to bring them in line with the challenging economic conditions. Unfortunately, that means laying off employees — by far the toughest part of being a manager. Here's the email I sent to Yahoos today:

Yahoo Layoffs Today May Not Be Last — Yahoo began laying off 1,500 workers on Wednesday as part of a plan, announced in October, to slash expenses by $400 million a year. The cost cutting, however, may have to go deeper in the coming year. — “There could be additional staff reductions next year …

Google To Take Chrome Out Of Beta — Google vice president Marissa Mayer announced Google Chrome is coming out of beta in an interview with Michael Arrington at Le Web 08. The Google's open source browser has a number of eager customers, including OEMs who can't offer the browser until it is in full release.

Google Executive Departs for LinkedIn — Dipchand “Deep” Nishar, a longtime Google Inc. executive who helped start its mobile business and other key products, is leaving the company to become a senior executive at LinkedIn Corp. — Mr. Nishar, 40, in January will become vice president …

TV has license to kill movies at iTunes, Netflix — Apple is an Internet retailer and Neflix is a Web video rental service, but Hollywood treats them as if they were potential competitors to TV broadcasters. — In the past two weeks, customers of iTunes and Netflix's streaming digital-movie service …

2008 Year-End Google Zeitgeist — As the year comes to a close, it's time to look at the big events, memorable moments and emerging trends that captivated us in 2008. As it happens, studying the aggregation of the billions of search queries that people type into the Google search box gives us …

HP to offer 3-year laptop battery — A fast-charging laptop battery that promises to last at least three years without any degradation in performance is coming to the market as an option with Hewlett-Packard laptops. The Sonata battery is the product of three years of development work …

Google, Microsoft Back Off on Datacenter Plans — The two online giants rethink ambitious datacenter efforts, but for different reasons. — With the economy in the shape it's in, even Microsoft and Google are thinking twice before dropping $100 million on a new datacenter.

Latest Firefox 3.1 Beta Adds Multi-Touch Support — On Monday, Mozilla released the latest beta version of Firefox 3.1. This “Beta 2” version of the popular web browser adds a number of new features across all supported platforms including: — Private Browsing Mode — Faster JavaScript engine

Gee, One Bold Storm coming up.... So here I am. In a hotel room in New York. The writing desk and its view of xth Avenue are all but obscured by:- — 7 x Mini USB cables: 2 of them are the new Micro type that Blackberry has switched to for the Storm only, the rest are standard.

Apple stabilizes new Mac notebooks — Apple has released stabilizing updates for its new MacBook, shown here, as well as other systems introduced in October. — (Credit: Apple) — Apple has released several new firmware updates aimed at solving problems with its latest batch of notebooks.

Leaving Mozilla — I will be leaving Mozilla at the end of the year. I am sad to be leaving, but I am excited to go work on something I have always been passionate about. I wish I could tell you about it now, but that will have to wait for a while. — You will still get Mozilla security information here.

Goodbye WIPI, Hello iPhone — After dragging its heels for months, Korea's telecommunications regulator finally came around and declared WIPI, a local software standard mandated for data-enabled mobile phones, a mistake. — The decision will bring an end to the dreadful wait by Korean gadget lovers …